Double Letters Puzzles

These double letter puzzles from Serhiy Grabarchuk look simple, but they can be surprisingly tricky to solve!

Usually, my classroom puzzle table features mathematical puzzles. But every once in a while, I like to change things up and feature a word/letter-based puzzle.

Don’t worry, though. There’s still a bit of hidden mathematical reasoning in this puzzle.

Puzzle Instructions

You are given nine cards. Each card features a different set of double letters. Your goal is to arrange the nine cards in a line so that a 10-letter word is formed.

(NOTE: some versions of this puzzle feature a different number of cards that produce a different length of resulting word.)

Cards can (and must) overlap each other. But, you cannot fully cover, rotate, or flip any of the cards.

Here’s a visual that Serhiy Grabarchuk created to illustrate how the letter cards can be arranged. Keep in mind, the word you will be creating is MUCH longer!

Puzzle Source

I first ran across a double letters puzzle in Puzzle Box, Volume 2. You can also find double letters puzzles in Puzzle Box, Volume 1 and Puzzle Box, Volume 3.

I cannot recommend this series of puzzle books enough for classroom teachers. Every time I flip through one of these books, I end up bookmarking ten more things I want to create for my students!

These puzzles were created by Serhiy Grabarchuk. I found out while doing some research as I wrote this post that these puzzles are actually known as “DoubLetters” puzzles.

Serhiy published another one of his DoubLetters puzzles on Puzzles.com in February of 2012.

Using These Puzzles in the Classroom

I have used these puzzles both flat on my puzzle table and with magnets on the back thanks to the inspiration of Lisa Richardson. I placed adhesive disc magnets on the back of each piece.

I’m super excited with the results of magnetizing these puzzles. I’ve had WAY more students attempt them than I ever had last year with the puzzles laying horizontally on the puzzle table. I will definitely be keeping these puzzles vertical going forward!

More Double Letter Puzzles from Lisa Richardson

Lisa Richardson was inspired by my blog post to create her own set of Double Letters puzzles. I was super inspired by her use of magnets on the back of the letter cards.